R. Kelly's daughter claims in new documentary that she was sexually abused by the singer as a child

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R. Kelly's daughter, Joanne Kelly, has spoken about her childhood with the convicted sex offender and has now claimed for the first time that she too was one of his victims.

Joanne, 26, made the allegations in TVEI Network's new two-part documentary R. Kelly's Karma: A Daughter's Journeywhich features “raw and emotional” interviews with Joanne, her siblings and her mother Drea Kelly, who was married to the disgraced rapper from 1996 to 2009.

“He was my everything. For a long time I didn't even want to believe it happened. I didn't know he would hurt me even if he was a bad person,” Joanne said of her father in the documentary. “I was too afraid to tell anyone. I was too afraid to tell my mother.”

Joanne doesn't elaborate on the alleged abuse in the first episode, but says prison is a “well-suited place” for Kelly, 57, particularly given her “personal experience.”

“I really feel like that one millisecond completely changed my entire life and who I was as a person and how the shine that I had and the light that I carried was changed,” she added. “After I told my mother, I stopped going there; my brother (Robert) and my sister (Jaah), we didn't go there anymore. And even up to now I have a lot of trouble with it.”

In the second episode, Joanne claimed she was only eight or nine years old when she was allegedly subjected to sexual abuse by Kelly.

“I just remember waking up to him touching me,” she recalled through tears. “And I didn't know what to do, so I just laid there and pretended to be asleep.”

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Joanne said when she finally told her mother about the alleged abuse in 2009, the two went to the police and filed an anonymous report.

“They couldn’t prosecute him because I waited too long. At that point in my life I felt like I had said something for nothing,” she said.

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In a statement shared with People Through his attorney, Kelly vehemently denied these allegations, saying, “His ex-wife made the same allegation years ago, and it was investigated by the Illinois Department of Children & Family Services and was unfounded…And the 'filmmakers' whoever they are “We have not reached out to Mr. Kelly or his team to even allow him to deny these hurtful claims.”

The “Ignition” artist is currently serving a 31-year sentence at the FCI Butner Medium I Correctional Facility in North Carolina.

He was initially sentenced to 30 years in prison in 2022 after being convicted of racketeering and sex trafficking. A year later, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison for illegal sexual activity and three counts of producing pornography that showed he had abused a minor.

A judge rejected the prosecutor's request that Kelly serve the sentences consecutively, instead ruling that he would serve both sentences concurrently, with an additional year.

The judge later rejected Kelly's appeal of the 2023 sentence.

R. Kelly's Karma: A Daughter's Journey is now available to stream on TVEI Networks.

If you have been raped or sexually abused, you can contact your nearest Rape Crisis organization for expert, independent and confidential support. You can find more information on their website Here.